Quotes About Learning

I learned about men from my son.

I agree completely with my son James when he says 'Internet is like electricity. The latter lights up everything, while the former lights up knowledge'.

I play chess badly and I've been beaten by my 10-year old son.

I must confess that I'm not a great reader. At the moment I'm reading my son's 'Stig of the Dump' by Clive King and I've got a plant catalogue on the go.

Learning great works like the Liszt Sonata or Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' should be a struggle to a certain extent, where you need to labor intensely with your own brain and soul for the meaning of the work instead of cutting and pasting a bunch of stuff together from the Internet and - boom! - there you are with a performance ready to go.

I first started listening to Sondheim's work when I was a kid.

My music is mostly for the music. And it gives the liberty to do anything which I want. And nobody limits me to one genre of music. But I learn from life and I try to give back to life, in a way, whether it's the thought of the song or whether it's the approach to the arrangement or anything.

Every time I re-perform a song, I gain some perspective.

I'm still learning a lot as a songwriter. I try to write down and make a note of ideas that I cross paths with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a conversation or something I hear on the radio, seeing a movie, or just thoughts in my head as I'm walking down the street.

It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn.

I don't think I'm a great songwriter, but I think I've learned a lot about it, and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

Working as a musician, I have to constantly generate new material, so school keeps me sharp. Reading and writing all the time helps me to be a better songwriter.

I'm not particularly good at anything. I'm not an incredible guitarist or piano player or songwriter. I think what I do is, when I notice someone is really good at something, I try to get that out of them.

I was a coat-checker at Orso, and all these wonderful actors were coming in, and it was exciting to me, so I started going to classes, and my excuse was, 'I'll be a better songwriter if I can understand how to play a character.' Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth.

I've learned and grown as a songwriter.

I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.

I want to keep growing as a musician. I want to keep making records. I want to keep improving as a songwriter. That's what it's all about - to learn, you know?

I've learned as much about writing from songwriters as I have from other writers.

Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.

But this is pretty new for me, both songwriting and singing.

Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.

Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how's and why's of piano.

I lived in Nashville for about five years. It was almost like me going to college for my craft. I immersed myself in the songwriting community there. They embraced me, and I made some real friends but also learned so much.

Songwriting itself, I don't think you can really teach that.